Existing ram plate designs for evacuating viscous materials from large (300 gallon) reusable containers require the user to exhaust when lowering and vent when raising from the same port. Higher viscosity materials in the range of 100,000 cps (centipoise) will not evacuate bleed materials from venting ports rapidly enough to allow proper airflow and lead to the creation of a vacuum inside the drum when raising existing ram plates.
The design herein allows increased airflow or venting to a 300-gallon drum when extracting the ram plate and facilitating the performance of drum change and maintenance. This design relocates the existing venting port from the pump-mounting collar and places it in a recessed pocket open to the bottom side of the ram plate.
Relocating the vent port should eliminate insufficient airflow caused by material restriction of the vent ports because the bleed and vent ports will be independent of each other. The user is able to bleed residual air from the drum manually with the use of a bleed stick as they lower the Ram plate on to the material surface. It is common practice for the user to keep the bleed port open to atmosphere until visual verification of material to the pump intake is made. They then replace the manual bleed stick and use the system to pump materials from the container.
When the user determines a need for the tote to be replaced they prepare the system per the operating instructions and begin to raise the ram plate from the tote. A pneumatic cylinder will drive the vent seal to an open position allowing airflow into the tote. Separation of the material bleed and air vent functions will minimize potential problems with material curing in the valving assembly, offer increased venting capacity, and facilitate easier cleaning and replacement.
Ram plates are used to pressurize liquids in their large barrels or containers, thus facilitating their pumping directly from said container to outside applications. The convenience cannot be overstated of taking such liquids directly from their transportation containers to direct application, especially when it is not uncommon for such barrels to contain 300 gallons of liquid. Currently, the industry uses ram plates with only one type of venting to allow air intake and exhaust to prevent suction and vacuum when the plate is moved vertically.
When dealing with high viscosity liquids, often a vent will be filled with liquid and such liquids fail to drip or fall from said vents. This obviously blocks the vent and prevents free flow of air, thus creating the suction or vacuum effect. The invention here contains a secondary method of manually exposing internal liquids to outside air pressure, thus depressurizing and removing the vacuum effect inside the barrel. Levers or bleed sticks are able to expose vents when manually depressed which allow free flow of air to the outside atmosphere in the event the vent ports are blocked.
Further, such invention contains a double-seal that runs the circumference of the plate that preserves internal pressure and allows up to xc2xd inch variance in the internal barrel circumference while maintaining effective seals.
Also, such invention has nodules that attach to a machine that raises and lowers the ram plate, such vertical movement being necessary to pressurizing the internal liquids.
These and other objects and advantages of the invention will appear more fully from the following description made in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein like reference characters refer to the same or similar parts throughout the several views.